Anthropic’s Amodei: We could grow 80x this year

80x

We knew Claude Code was driving crazy growth at Anthropic, but it may be much more than the company is expecting.

Speaking at the company’s developer conference yesterday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that while the company is planning for 10x growth this year, it could be as much as 80x, calling the overwhelming demand “crazy” and that he looked forward to more modest growth, saying such growth is ”too hard to handle.”

The demand is so great that Anthropic partnered with Elon Musk’s xAI to buy up the bulk of computing from his Colossus data center in Tennessee.

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Rani Molla22m

Tesla’s Model Y just cleared a new federal safety bar

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced today that Tesla Model Ys manufactured after November 12 were the first to pass the agency’s new advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) tests, which are now part of the New Car Assessment Program.

“By successfully passing these new tests, the 2026 Tesla Model Y demonstrates the lifesaving potential of driver assistance technologies and sets a high bar for the industry,” NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison wrote in the press release. "We hope to see many more manufacturers develop vehicles that can meet these requirements.”

The new tests include:

Pedestrian automatic emergency braking
Lane keeping assistance
Blind spot warning, and
Blind spot intervention

The milestone offers Tesla highly coveted regulatory validation, as it seeks to spur usage of its Full Self Driving (Supervised) tech. NHTSA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rani Molla7h

Tesla’s made-in-China vehicle sales jumped 36% in April

Tesla’s sales of made-in-China vehicles — sold across China, Europe, and other international markets — rose 36% year over year to 79,478 units in April. The increase marks the sixth straight month of annual growth in sales of vehicles made in the world’s largest manufacturing economy, suggesting the EV maker’s overseas business may be stabilizing after a difficult stretch.

That said, China wholesale deliveries fell from March, even as overall new energy vehicle sales rose 7% during the period.

Later this month, the China Passenger Car Association will report China-only sales, offering a clearer picture of performance in Tesla’s second-largest market.

Tesla China April wholesale sales jump year-on-year but slip from March

Later this month, the China Passenger Car Association will report China-only sales, offering a clearer picture of performance in Tesla’s second-largest market.

Rani Molla5/6/26

Anthropic’s scramble for compute now includes rival xAI

Another day, another major partnership with an AI rival. This time, Anthropic signed a deal with SpaceX’s xAI to access compute from its Colossus 1 data center to help it improve capacity for its Claude Pro and Claude Max subscribers. Just yesterday, The Information reported that Anthropic planned to spend $200 billion on Google Cloud services over the next five years. As Sherwood News’ Luke Kawa wrote:

“Anthropic has been a victim of its own success: the popularity of Claude Code and Cowork have revealed compute constraints and left users frustrated by caps. In response, the Claude developer has embarked upon a mad scramble for compute, striking or expanding deals with CoreWeave, Amazon, Google, and Broadcom.”

Now, it’s adding xAI to the list — even as the Elon Musk company builds a competing model.

In less terrestrial news, xAI said that as part of the agreement, Anthropic “expressed interest in partnering to develop multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity.”

xAI — Creators of Grok, the AI Chatbot

“Anthropic has been a victim of its own success: the popularity of Claude Code and Cowork have revealed compute constraints and left users frustrated by caps. In response, the Claude developer has embarked upon a mad scramble for compute, striking or expanding deals with CoreWeave, Amazon, Google, and Broadcom.”

Now, it’s adding xAI to the list — even as the Elon Musk company builds a competing model.

In less terrestrial news, xAI said that as part of the agreement, Anthropic “expressed interest in partnering to develop multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity.”

5/6/26

TEST TIME!

Meet your new interview partner: Claude

Chris Stokel-Walker

Rani Molla5/6/26

SpaceX and Tesla’s Terafab could cost $119 billion — far more than expected

The initial phase of SpaceX and Tesla’s joint chip production effort, called Terafab, could cost $55 billion, with additional phases adding up to $119 billion in capital investment, Reuters reports, citing a notice posted on a Texas county website. Ultimately the goal of Terafab is to build enough in-house AI chip capacity to supply both companies.

The price tag is also higher than expected. Morgan Stanley had previously estimated Terafab would cost $34 billion to $45 billion.

Fortunately for Tesla, whose capex is expected to skyrocket this year, much of the early spending will sit on SpaceX’s balance sheet.

Here’s Musk on the last earnings call:

“SpaceX is going to take care of like the initial phase of the scaled up Terafab... Any kind of intercompany thing has to be approved by both the SpaceX and Tesla board of directors. It’s got to go through a conflict resolution. It’s going to have, unfortunately, a lot of complexity because we’ve got to make sure Tesla shareholders are served and SpaceX shareholders are served, and strike the right balance there.”

SpaceX files plan for $55 billion Terafab chip facility in Texas

The price tag is also higher than expected. Morgan Stanley had previously estimated Terafab would cost $34 billion to $45 billion.

Fortunately for Tesla, whose capex is expected to skyrocket this year, much of the early spending will sit on SpaceX’s balance sheet.

Here’s Musk on the last earnings call:

“SpaceX is going to take care of like the initial phase of the scaled up Terafab... Any kind of intercompany thing has to be approved by both the SpaceX and Tesla board of directors. It’s got to go through a conflict resolution. It’s going to have, unfortunately, a lot of complexity because we’ve got to make sure Tesla shareholders are served and SpaceX shareholders are served, and strike the right balance there.”

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